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Majority favor referendum on UN bid

More than 75 percent of Taiwanese expressed support for the idea of holding a national referendum on the nation's UN bid, a survey released yesterday showed.

The survey was conducted by Taiwan Thinktank on Dec. 27 and 28, polling 1,085 interviewees aged over 20 around the country.

The results showed that 77 percent of respondents said they supported holding a referendum to show the world the Taiwanese wish to apply for membership in the global body.

Up to 73.6 percent of the interviewees, regardless of their political affiliation, said that Taiwan's inability to join the UN "seriously affects the nation's competitiveness in the world."

More than 50 percent also believed that this affects national security, but close to 40 percent of respondents disagreed.

A larger number of respondents aged 20 to 29 regarded UN membership as vital to national security, which might show that younger Taiwanese had more of a sense of crisis than other age groups, Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政), chairman of Soochow University's political science department, said at a press conference.

Cross-strait relations may improve if both China and Taiwan held UN membership said 63 percent of the interviewees.

Opinions diverged though on whether the nation should apply for membership under the name "Republic of China" or "Taiwan," with about 38 percent favoring the former and about 48 percent choosing the latter.

Forty-seven percent of respondents said China's oppression of Taiwan would instead make Taiwanese more determined to gain UN membership, but 33 percent of them said they saw little hope of that happening.

"The survey's results showed that a majority of the public likely feel indignant at the nation's exclusion from the UN," said Liu Shih-chung (劉世忠), deputy director of the Research and Planning Committee at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

They, however, recognize and support the government's efforts to join the UN, even if it seemed an impossible mission, he added.

In another section of the questionnaire, which was designed to gauge respondents' attitude toward the long-stalled arms procurement bills, 60.5 percent said that Taiwan's relations with the US would be affected if the bills continued to languish in the legislature.

About 46 percent of respondents said that the legislature should pass the bills before the end of the legislative session on Jan. 19.

Although 44.8 percent of respondents believed the delay may influence national security, 33.7 percent thought otherwise.

In terms of party affiliation, only 31.1 percent of pan-blue respondents said delaying the passage of the bills would influence national security, while about 74 percent of the interviewees affiliated with the pan-green camp gave a positive answer to the question.

A NT$6.27 billion (US$191.9 million) portion of the bills was put to committee review in the legislature on Dec. 30, but passage of the proposal remains unclear.
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